"The Darjeeling Limited" is a frustrating movie, a work of immaturity from a director who should be past the empty gestures and self-protective distance of his early work. Wes Anderson has attempted a film of strong emotion, but entrapped in the self-imposed coolness of his style, he has created a wistful, decorative emptiness - with a handful of obligatory flailings in the direction of random meaning.

The frustration is compounded by the fact that there's enough here to discern the movie Anderson might have made. Three brothers, who haven't seen one another in a year, rediscover their connection while on a spiritual journey through India. Such a premise demanded a commitment to a real story, leading to an emotional resolution. Instead, Anderson tries to divert us with clever bits and self-contained incidents that go nowhere. The film delves no deeper than the consumer aspect of travel, the nouveau colonialism in which spiritual shopping becomes a conversational accessory.

Anderson's use of music is all too telling. At key moments, he pulls from the Kinks heavily, as though Ray Davies (and in one case Dave Davies) could provide the purpose and emotion that the scenes are lacking. These are good songs, but they mainly end up emphasizing the expressive limits of what's happening onscreen.

The movie benefits from the performances of Owen Wilson and Adrien Brody, as two of the brothers, and it survives the casting of Jason Schwartzman as the youngest brother. The good news is that Wilson and Brody occasionally succeed in suggesting depths that are nowhere in the script. As for Schwartzman, he doesn't make things worse, but he's not capable of making them better. He co-wrote the screenplay, and in "Darjeeling Limited" he seems in his element.

Francis (Wilson), bandaged and recovering from an accident, brings his younger brothers, Peter (Brody) and Jack (Schwartzman), together for the journey. The intention is that they bond and begin to feel and act like brothers again. Things happen on the train, but they're nothing of importance, just fey, unrelated incidents.

Eventually, Anderson gets them off the train and tries to bring the movie to earth in some revelatory way. The brothers bond with people in an Indian village, and although these scenes land as more signifier than significant, you can feel the relief on the part of the actors - especially Brody - in being given less wispy fare. Brody finally gets to connect with the grief inside his character, and for those minutes, he lifts the movie.

Wilson gets his moment of heavy lifting as well, in a simple but haunting scene in which he takes off his bandages, while looking at himself in the mirror with a thousand-yard stare. The face that's revealed is no longer that of a golden boy. That's a man who has looked into the abyss. It's a visible clue to the internal disturbance that may have led to the actor's recent suicide attempt. That Wilson allowed the camera the intimacy of that gaze is to his credit as an actor.

Anderson is too talented to make a film without memorable moments. As a visual stylist alone, his work is impossible to dismiss. Yet cut around the substantive bits in "Darjeeling Limited," and you'd be left with 20 minutes of disparate, unconnected scenes. The film is eye-popping and gorgeous but vacant, a diversion and a deflection pointing to a meaning that never arrives.

Enlightenment isn't a moment of realization but the product of commitment, and spirituality is expressed in action - it's not an acquisition. If a man throws away his suitcase in order to run fast and catch a train, it doesn't mean that he's finally discovered his priorities. It probably means that he's got enough money to replace whatever was in the bag. Like the characters in "Darjeeling Limited," Anderson sets the bar too low for himself.

The talent is there. It's undeniable and unmistakable. But a more frontal embrace of pain, without the flattening detours, will be Anderson's entranceway to his next level as an artist.

-- Advisory: This film contains strong language and simulated sex.

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